File:Seelstrang.1875.jpg

"Map showing the proposed transaction submitted in 1876 by Argentine minister Bernardo de Irigoyen to the Chilean minister in Buenos Aires

This reproduction covers a sector of the map of the Argentine Republic made by Seelstrang and Tourmente, issued in Buenos Aires in 1875.

The sector shown here was sent to the Chilean Foreign Ministry by Diego Barros Arana, Chilean Minister in Buenos Aires, attached to a communication dated 10 July 1876.

On that map the Chilean Minister traced a red line to show the boundary proposed by the Argentine Foreign Minister, Bernardo de Irigoyen, in the course of the negotiations which preceded the signing of the Boundary Treaty of 23 July 1881.

As may be seen from the map, the boundary proposed by Argentine Minister Irigoyen, in the extreme southern region, divided the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego and thereafter followed the Beagle Channel and continued as far as the Isla de los Estados. Navarino, Picton, Nueva and Lennox Islands, together with all the other islands and islets continuing southwards as far as Cape Horn, were attributed to Chile according to the Argentine proposal.

That proposal must be retained later, in 1881, at the time of signing the Boundary Treaty of 1881 between the two countries, with a few modifications in the region of the Magellan Strait.

Moreover, the Argentine map of Seelstrang and Tourmente of 1875 enlightens another aspect of great interest in respect of the Argentine pretensions during the Beagle Conflict. In it it is shown a limit between both Republics which follows all along the Magellan Strait, leaving for Argentina all the archipielagoes to the South of it, wich proves that Argentina claimed large areas situated in the Pacific. That contradicts its 1978 thesis on the "oceanic distribution" in function of the Cape Horn meridian, based on the "uti possidetis juris" of 1810